Working Easter
Somebody has to do the work.
On Tuesday, Linda Clark was discussing Sue K’s new Private Member’s Bill that would make it easier for parents with young kids to work shorter or more flexible hours.
With Easter looming, Linda pondered Kiwis’ apparent hypocrisy on work-life balance matters: we all appreciate more free time with our families - long weekends, half days, and the like - but we also all seem to want to have services available 24/7. These two desires don’t mesh. After all, if you go to a restaurant on Easter Sunday, the waiter serving you has a family they won’t be spending the holiday with; the same is true for the chef, the maitre’d, the bar tender, and so on.
But National’s comfortable with kids not having quality family time over Easter. They’re going all out today, moaning that some shops aren’t going to be able to open this Easter because it’ll cost them too much to pay their employees the extra money now required under the Holidays Act. Their industrial relations spokesperson Wayne Mapp says:
When restaurants, bars and cafes close on public holidays, everyone loses - employees don’t get paid, businesses don’t make any profit and people don’t have anywhere to go for a coffee.
Frog-spawn! This is the kind of vacuous, monetarist statement I’ve come to expect from the Nats. Everyone loses? Well, the kid who gets to see her Mum because she’s not being pressured by the boss to go and work Easter Sunday doesn’t lose. Businesses don’t make any profit? Well, I don’t think any cafes are going to go out of business because they miss out on a couple of days’ business a year. Nowhere to go for a coffee? Try the kitchen, Dr Mapp.
